diff --git a/core/src/processing/data/XML.java b/core/src/processing/data/XML.java
index b345465e3..28023b768 100644
--- a/core/src/processing/data/XML.java
+++ b/core/src/processing/data/XML.java
@@ -810,6 +810,12 @@ public class XML implements Serializable {
   }
 
 
+  public String getContent(String defaultValue) {
+    String s = node.getTextContent();
+    return (s != null) ? s : defaultValue;
+  }
+
+
   /**
    * @webref xml:method
    * @brief Gets the content of an element as an int
diff --git a/core/todo.txt b/core/todo.txt
index 82e694752..cf07a64ed 100644
--- a/core/todo.txt
+++ b/core/todo.txt
@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ X when using increment() on IntList, make sure the index exists
 X   automatically resize the list if necessary
 X   (this is more in keeping with increment() in the Dict classes)
 X add join() method to Int/Float/StringList
+X add getContent(defaultValue) to XML
 
 cleaning
 X load/save methods.. is it save("blah.svg") or saveSVG("blah.svg")